In recent years, computing system complexities have continued to increase, as have interactions between such systems. As a result, the tasks of maintaining and synchronizing such systems have become increasingly complex and cumbersome.
Jobs are routinely scheduled to execute such tasks. Specialized job management systems have been developed to facilitate task performance as computing power and networking grows.
Indeed, successful job management is critical to the maintenance of large computer systems. The favorability of terms negotiated with customers in service level agreements (“SLAs”) also depends on successful job management. It is thus critical to ensure that those jobs deemed most important be executed within the correct timeframe. To this end, job management systems aim to generate an accurate job plan taking into account all the parameters which can influence a job's execution.